Experience of adopting faecal immunochemical testing to meet the NICE colorectal cancer referral criteria for low-risk symptomatic primary care patients in Oxfordshire, UK.

Objective: To compare the diagnostic performance of guaiac faecal occult blood (gFOB) testing with faecal immunochemical test (FIT) in a low-risk symptomatic primary care population to provide objective data on which to base local referral guidelines.

Design: Stool samples from routine primary care practice sent for faecal occult blood testing were analysed by a standard gFOB method and the HM-JACKarc FIT between January and March 2016. Symptoms described on the test request were recorded.

Music education and performing arts medicine: the state of the alliance.

As a group, musicians tend to be somewhat disembodied; their awareness of their whole selves extends almost exclusively to the parts involved directly with musical technique. Even though many consider musicians to be small muscle athletes, it is unusual to see a group of beginning musicians working out or warming up on their practice field, or having a trainer present to supervise their movements or their mental performance orientation, as one would in sports. Several questions come to mind.

Reduction of stromal fibroblast-induced mammary tumor growth, by retroviral ribozyme transgenes to hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor and its receptor, c-MET.

Purpose: Hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor (HGF/SF) is known to increase the invasiveness and migration of cancer cells in vitro and induce angiogenesis. This study examined if inhibition of HGF/SF receptor expression by cancer cells and HGF/SF expression by stromal fibroblasts affects the growth of mammary cancer.

Experimental Design: Transgenes encoding ribozymes to specifically target human HGF/SF receptor (pLXSN-MET) or HGF/SF (pLXSN-HGF) were constructed using a pLXSN retroviral vector.